How Do I Create My Own Domain

Check For Trademark Infringement

Both major and minor brands alike take issue with others using their trademarked names. Even if youve just made an innocent mistake, the legal hassle involved in a lawsuit and having to rearrange your web presence could be costly.

You can avoid these situations by using a trademark lookup tool before you finalize your choice.

Choose Your Billing Terms

After you select the appropriate plan, Hostinger asks you to choose a period for your plan: monthly, 12-month, 24-month, or 48-month.

If you want the free domain, do not select the month-to-month payment option. Hostinger only includes the free domain with terms of one year or more.

The longer your commitment, the greater the discount. You also stretch out that discount for as long as possible, because renewal pricing is never as good. This is not a Hostinger thing, this is just the way every host does it.

And if you sign up for longer, Hostinger will actually lower the renewal rate. This is not common. As you can see in the image above, the renewal price for a single month of service is $10.29/month, whereas the renewal price for a 48-month term drops to $5.99/month.

The downside to signing up for a longer period is that you have to pay upfront. Again, this is typical of every host, and the reason I like signing up for Hostinger is that it is a really great deal.

Do the math out: Hostinger Premium Shared Hosting costs $95.52 for four years of hosting. Pay a hundred dollars today and dont worry about your website until current high school freshmen have graduated.

When you factor in the savings of a free domain name, the price only looks better.

Select A Web Hosting Plan

After selecting the appropriate type of hosting, you we need to choose the right plan.

Hostinger offers a few different options for shared hosting. If you want to get a free domain, dont select their cheapest plan.

Below, you can see the free domain offers circled in green, with the lack of a free domain circled in red:

The Single Shared Hosting plan is a steal, no doubt, but if you want a free domain, its the wrong way to go. That leaves you with the Premium and Business Shared Hosting plans.

Lets take a closer look at what each plan offers.

Premium Shared Hosting

• Create up to 100 websites
• 100 GB SSD storage

• Daily backups
• Free CDN

Either of these plans is a solid option. Id lean toward the Premium plan if you arent expecting to hit your resource limits in terms of storage or monthly traffic.

Id recommend the Business plan for folks that are constantly updating their site or expecting a significant amount of traffic. Business plans include the automatic daily backups for the last seven days and weekly backups of the last seven weeks.

The ability to restore your site is crucial, and handling backups on your own is a hassle you can avoid with Business plans.

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Two Options Explained: Website Builder Vs Hosting

The range of web development tools is really extensive and versatile, but there are still two trusted web development options. You can either use a website builder or pick reliable hosting that provides free domain connection feature.

Lets have a look at two platforms, which are the most popular and credible representatives of both types of systems. These are Wix and Bluehost.

Add Domain Id Protection

When you register a domain name with ICANN, you must provide your contact information including your name, phone number, physical address, and email address.

As soon as your domain name is registered, this contact information becomes available to the public unless you pay for domain privacy through your domain registrar. This domain privacy will shield your information from view keeping your personal information safe from spammers or worse, identity thieves.

Once you’ve got the domain name in hand, you’re ready to find hosting and build your website. Consider a free CMS, like HubSpot, to design your website, strategize for SEO, and create a blog.

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How Long Does My Domain Name Registration Last How Do I Renew My Domain

How long your domain registration lasts can vary depending on the domain you purchase. Many domain name registrars will allow customers to register domains for 10 years at a time, but typically customers will register domains for one to three years.If you want to extend your registration, its easy to renew your domain with GoDaddy. You can choose to manually renew or set up auto-renewal, so you ensure it stays registered to you.

Registering A Domain Name

Once youve found a free domain name, the next step is to register it. This involves finding a registrar a company that registers domain names then filling out some details and paying a yearly fee for the domain.

As with Web hosting companies, there are hundreds of registrars to choose from. Many offer additional services, such as hosting, email, and site-building tools. If you want these extra services then go for it however, theres nothing to stop you registering your domain with one company, then getting your hosting elsewhere.

Here are some tips for finding a good registrar:

• Wikipedia has a handy list of the top ten domain registrars.
• Ask friends and colleagues for recommendations.
• Make sure your chosen registrar is accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or a similar body in the country that youre registering your domain. Usually therell be a message to this effect on the registrars homepage.
• If you want extra features such as hosting, you can use sites such as Web Hosting Talk to find out if their hosting service is good.

Price-wise, expect to spend between USD $10 and $30 per year for a gTLD domain . Country-specific domains may cost a little more. Shop around. If you find a reputable registrar that offers domains for $10/year then theres not much reason to spend $30/year with another registrar!

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What Are Domain Name Extensions

Domain name extensions help categorize different domain names. Its a special hierarchy, invented for the Internet.

You can choose among popular top-level domain extensions such as:

• .com
• .org
• .net

Or go with a local domain extension such as if you want to focus on building a presence in a specific country:

• .co.uk
• .fr
• .au

Also, theres a bunch of creative domain extensions, launched recently. You can try playing around with them to create a shorter, brandable name. For example:

• Alchemi.st
• Handma.de

List Of Domain Name Registrars

There are numerous domain name registrars. Listed below are just a few, along with my comments, if I know anything about them.Note that the domain name industry is highly competitive, with prices wildly fluctuating throughout the year, every year, soit’s impossible to really mention accurate prices below unless I spend all my time updating this page. Please check their sitesfor the latest rates. Unless otherwise stated, I have listed everything in US dollars, although if you go to theregistrar’s site, you may see the prices in your local currency.

In addition, as mentioned earlier, a number ofcommercial web hostswill give you a free domain name if you are hosting with them, as will some of the registrars above.

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Choose A Hosting Plan And Sign Up For Bluehost

As we discussed earlier, all Bluehost hosting plans come with free custom email domains. So to start with, head over to Bluehost and click on the Get Started Now button.

On the next screen, youll see details of the available Bluehost plans. All of these plans will let you create an email domain for free, but you should consider all the other features to make the best pick for your needs.

Click on the Select button under your desired plan to continue.

Next, well be creating your new domain name.

How To Register Your Website’s Domain Name

The first domain name in history was Symbolics.com, which was registered on March 15, 1985. Today, there are more than 300 million domain names, with millions more added each year. A domain name is essentially the address that visitors will type into their browser address bar to arrive at your website.

Domain names allow users to easily connect to other computer IP addresses by typing in an address like “Google.com” instead of Google’s numerical IP address of “74.125.239.116.” In other words, domain names make our lives a lot easier.

Your domain name is an important part of establishing your brand. No two domain names can be exactly alike, although they can be similar. Ideally, your domain name will be unique and distinctive, so users don’t confuse it with other domain names or different businesses.

You might be wondering isn’t a domain name, then, simply a website? Although they are similar, domain names and websites have important differences. Your domain name is the address for your website it is what people use to find your website, which consists of pages, images, and other files.

Choosing and registering a domain name is often the first step when building a website. Read on to learn how to register a domain name.

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Got Any Tips On Finding A Good Domain Name

You bet. While it’s really easy to register a domain, having a good domain strategy helps you register the best domain name possible. Here are some hints:Make it easy to remember. This is why many businesses get domains with their business names in them. Some people even choose their business name only after they have a domain they like.Don’t register one that’s trademarked, copyrighted, or being used by another company. This can lead to losing the domain and legal problems.Shorter is usually better because they’re easier for customers to remember. It’s also easier to get matching usernames for Facebook, Twitter and any other social media accounts you have.Got a local business? Include your neighborhood, city or country in your domain so local customers can quickly see where you are. Check the list of geographic domain extensions .berlin .nyc to see if there’s one for your area.Avoid numbers or hyphens. Anyone who hears your web address won’t know if you’re using a numeral 5 or “five”. If your business name has a number in it, register both versions with the number and with the number spelled out .Get more than one. As traffic to your website increases, you may attract then attention of copycats who’ll snatch up similar domain names in hopes of drawing traffic away from you. Register similar or misspelled domains early so this won’t be an issue later.

How To Register A Domain Name: 4 Options

• Using Bluehost web hosting

To get a domain name, youll need to call dibs with ICANN. ICANN is a global non-profit authority that maintains records on which domain and IP address belongs to whom and manages access to them.

But ICANN doesnt provide registration services, it only maintains records. Thats where domain name registrars come into play.

The primary role of a register is to:

• Coordinate claims on different domain names.
• Match specific domain names with Domain Name System nameservers.
• Ensure that there are no duplicate domain names.

Technically speaking, you are not buying a domain name from a registrar company, but reserve its usage for a specified time. You can pay to reserve a domain for 1-10 years at a time, depending on the registrar. After your initial subscription expires, youll need to renew it and pay a fee again. You can re-purchase your domain name over and over again.

When registering a domain name, you sign a long-term lease of your domain . You can read more about the domain costs here.

In practice, all of the above is much simpler than you think as we will show below.

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Finding A Suitable Domain Name

As mentioned above, domain names need to be unique. And in todays scenario finding a suitable domain name can be quite an exercise. Why? Because all the good ones are already registered!

However, this should not discourage you. From time to time, I too go through this process and am able to get my hands at a catchy domain name. How? Patience and persistence. Here are some pointers to help you in your search for a good domain name.

• Domain names can contain dashes which can be used to separate your first and last names. This gives a great flexibility when hunting for a personalized domain name.
• Dont just narrow the search to the .com extension. If you are in the UK, for instance, a .co.uk is more suited.
• Continuing the point above, www.GoDaddy.com offers several alternatives to the dot-com. A few of these might just appeal to you:
• .me

Activate Gmail For Your Google Workspace Account

The final step is to activate Gmail for your Google Workspace accounts.

On the page, youll see the following MX records:

• aspmx.l.google.com / priority = 1
• alt3.aspmx.l.google.com / priority = 10
• alt4.aspmx.l.google.com / priority = 10

Youll need to open a new tab and go to your hosts DNS tool, or re-open the DNS tool tab from earlier.

Typically, you would need to copy and paste manually, but not with Kinsta. Since we are big fans of Google Workspace, we have created a one-click solution for helping our customers setting this up quickly.

Simply access Kinsta DNS through MyKinsta, and click the Add Gmail MX Records button at the top of the page.

The MX records, like nameservers, are the same, regardless of the user, so you dont have to change anything. Press the Add 5 records button to proceed.

Since it can take some time for the changes to go live, you can take a tea or coffee break before continuing.

Alternative Method For Other Hosts

For other hosts, youd need to access your DNS tool, for example, through logging into your cPanel and opening DNS Zone Editor.

Select the appropriate domain, and then click the Add Record button to open a new window.

Fill out the appropriate priority and then copy and paste the destination. Double-check that everything is correct, and click Add Record to complete. Repeat the process for the four alternative MX destinations.

If your host has email enabled by default, you might need to remove existing MX records.

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How To Use A Custom Domain Name For Email

For the sake of this article, well use GoDaddy as an example. Just follow the steps below to attach a domain name to your email.

For the small monthly fee involved, Professional Email is a no-brainer for me to build trust and make sure emails are recognizable when landing in contacts inboxes. I use Microsoft 365 for my main eCommerce site.

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